Blogging for the Gray Wolf

Here we go again. Idaho is bringing out the big guns in the Lolo zone. Helicopter gunners, Alaska trappers, will be targeting the hapless Lolo wolves. If this isn’t a wolf pogrom I have no idea what else to call it. The Lolo elk numbers were down long before wolves were reintroduced. Idaho fish and game is upset because only six wolves have been killed in the Lolo so far, they want 50 or 60 DEAD. Are there even that many wolves in the Lolo?

Are elk and elk numbers just a smokescreen to kill more wolves? Idaho hasn’t been secretive about their plans for wolves. They’ve been itching to kill lots of wolves or most of the wolves in the state and Congress has given them the chance to do just that. Bad idea Congress, very bad idea. We’re getting a taste of state “wolf management” and it’s not pretty.

“Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, called the extra wolf control measures frustrating and above and beyond the careful management state officials promised before delisting of the animals.

“The states were talking about measured actions and it turns out as soon as federal protection were lifted they are using every possible means they can to kill as many wolves as they can and there is nothing measured or rational about this,” Suckling said.”

Montana FWP has been busy too. They proposed extending the December 31, 2011 wolf hunt deadline to January 31, 2012 and for good measure came up with the brilliant idea to allow hunters to kill wolves for livestock depredations instead of Wildlife Services. They asked for comments. So advocates obliged and told them to stop moving the goal posts, end the hunt when you said you would. Don’t stress wolves out anymore then they already are by chasing them around during breeding season, which begins in February. And no private hunters killing wolves for depredations. Looks like an end-run around Wildlife Services budget cuts??

Apparently all the comments against extending the hunts were ignored and for good measure Montana FWP tacked on two more weeks to the hunt, stretching it to February 15, 2012, right into wolf breeding season. FWP is going to meet up again in January, I guess to discuss if they’ve killed enough wolves or maybe they’ll have to “go all Idaho on us” and extend the hunt through June 2012, as the Gem State has done in the Lolo and Selway zones. Oh and they pushed through the hunter proposal, so now selected Montana hunters get to have little mini-wolf hunts all year round.

So hey, thanks Congress for ramming the wolf budget rider through and allowing hell to be unleashed on wolves. And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you as well for weakening the Endangered Species Act. Great job there too. NOT!!! You betrayed the ESA and you betrayed America’s wolves, causing untold suffering to these maligned and persecuted animals. Shame!!

I will never visit Idaho or Montana again while the massacre on the magnificent wolves continue. I can’t stand to think of these wonderful family members fear as they are mowed down, their little ones to be clubbed to death or left to starve in their dens. Helicopters…..My God what kind of people are these. No one but a monster could enjoy that….I wonder what Karma these people set into motion after they have slaughtered these beautiful, intelligent ancestors of our beloved Dogs…I would be worried if I were the killers ….Oh the needless suffering…We now know man would have had a very hard time going from hunter/gatherer to present man with out the great help of Wolves/Dogs. Please Stop Now…..Your state’s couldn’t be so poor and incompetently run that you can kid your selves that you’r doing it for revenue.

I really can’t get my mind around the fact that this type of carnage is being planned to be carried out on such a exquisite animal . It’s time for the parties that be , are held accountable for this annihilation. I have become aware through talking to people around here ( Lacey, Wash.) they have/had no clue this was taking place , and this has lead me to realize that the vast majority of the public still needs to be woke up and become involved any way they can to stop this insanity . I think now more than ever WE need to stand together and let the American people know about what the wolves being : sport hunted , poisoned by compound1080& m-44’s , horribly trapped by snares & jaw traps, and again being attacked from the air by gun ships,and all the lies & mis-information be spread by state officials ,ranchers and so-called hunters. This is a whole lot of effort to wipe out a species that is just trying to live out in the wilderness and raise its family as its tried to for thousands of years before man . So now that I know of all these heinous crimes are being committed against the wolves I can not just sit back and just hope for the best ! It’s time to go all out and get our nation educated and to speak up against barbaric actions. A nation wide campaign , more letters to the press and state & national officials , protest, word of mouth what ever it will take !! I’m still relatively new to all this but There is no going back once you know . I”m willing and ready. I BELIEVE WE CAN DO THIS ,I JUST HOPE IT WON’T BE TO LITTLE TO LATE !

So well said Ed. It’s the American people who can put a stop to this but we have to be loud, persistent and pro-active. I can tell you most people don’t know what’s going on and it’s because there is a virtual blackout of this issue in broadcast journalism. A few articles are getting through in the msm print media. like Bill Gibson’s excellent piece in the LA Times, The New War On Wolves. But there has to be more, much more. That’s why I work so hard to keep the wolves’ plight alive and updated. Please share with everyone you know. And have them share and so on. We have to hold candlelight vigils, protest rallies, write letters to the editor and boycott the wolf states. This is a war not just against wolves but our wildlife and wild places. The fish and game agencies are no more then shills for the hunting and ranching lobbies and their minions. It’s out of control and becoming more frenzied with each passing day. Coming up on the horizon are the delisting of Wyoming and Great Lakes Region wolves. Wyoming wants to treat their wolves like vermin and shoot them on site. All three Great Lakes Region states want a wolf hunt. Minnesota is reneging on it’s promise not to hold a wolf hunt for five years if wolves were ever delisted. Franken and crew over there in Minnesota were making lots of noise when the Wildlife Services budget was cut and they didn’t think they had enough money to trap and kill wolves. Who knew Minnesota has been trapping and killing wolves for thirty years??

Have you seen this feature at the Obama White House site. Individuals create and post petitions on the site and anyone can sign on. There are several that relate to the slaughter of horses. I don’t see anything there about the plight of the western wolves.
Do you think this could be a genuine opportunity? At least it is another way to get the message out. What do you think?

Janet, I know there have been several petitions on that site concerning wolves but none that I know of have reached the required number of signatures or seemed to impress Obama. I think he is totally out of touch with what’s happening in the Northern Rockies. After all he appointed Salazar, knowing full well he was a rancher. I’m not a big fan of petitions because I think they give people a false sense of security that something is happening when most petitions seem to be ignored. I think to really make an impression you have to have millions signing. Just my two cents. I like the online letters, like the one you signed from the Sierra Club or the one I have on the front page of the blog from EarthJustice concerning Wyoming wolves. You can use the pre-written remarks and add your own. That seems a better option.

I pray to God that these beautiful, gentle, animals will stay deep in the woods and keep moving. I know they have to come out to hunt, but hopefully they will find enough to eat out of the range of the big guns. They have been know to survive winters on berries. Maybe once we get rid of ‘Killer Obama” and get a human in office, we might be able to persuade the new president to put the wolves back on the Endangered List again. The low life governors of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana won’t be in the pockets of the new president. All we can do right now is pray. I sent petitions to save the wolf to these governors and Salazar and they said they only received about three or four-hundred signatures. BULL! They received not only signatures in favor of putting the wolf back on the Endanged list from America, but there were signatures for ALL around the world. They shredded them. That idiot secrectary or whatever she is at the Idaho number thinks that she owns the wolves. She is a real nut case. God came down and told her, “I give to you all the wolves in Idaho. They are yours and yours alone. I was going to give them to the world to enjoy and to stablize the Eco system, but I’ve changed my mind because you’re such a wonderful person.” Somebody ought to take her out back and knock some sense into her. There definitely is something wrong with her.

Right now, the Obama administration is considering sealing a deal with the state of Wyoming that would allow two-thirds of Wyoming’s wolves to be killed. They could be shot on sight, trapped, or even chased to exhaustion and exterminated by anyone, at any time, for any reason.

Entire packs of wolves, including pups, could be gunned down from low-flying planes for sport. But we have one last chance to stop this from happening. Take action now to protect Wyoming’s wolves from this fate.”

All HELL is fixing to break loose! We have to stop
Obama , Salazar, Fish & Game , and Wyoming NOW ! WE
NEED MEDIA ATTENTION !

Thank you Krista. I just signed on to the petition at the SierraClub site. What I don’t understand is why organizations such as NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife can’t spend some of their ample income to put out public info ads. They did it before. What is stopping them now. It doesn’t make any sense.

This is a real testosterone fest for the hunters. Apparently a lot of people just plain like to kill, and the wolves have been hated for centuries, much of that hatred based on mythology. So I guess the good old boys can bring on the guns and helicopters and have themselves a ball. Disgusting.

The good old boys have nothing better to do,maybe,Sarah Palin would like to join them.The wolf killing,and all the other wildlife,that is gunned down,is a terribly sad sad situation.Not enough is done.God help us,or soon,most all will be extinct.To bad,the hunters can’t become extinct.

Then it’s time we declare war on these
barbaric hunters and trappers!!!
May the Great Spirit unleash His mighty
wrath upon these murderous infidels and cast
them into the Abyss of Eternal Death!!!
A thousand curses on these hunters and trappers!!!

May the Great Spirit unleash His Mighty wrath with care. I don’t wish anyone in an abyss or dead tho death be the price of life and the man be a killer. No one should fear. But how not when these are frightening times? Sad and sorry times. Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto Accord. Hungary, a former Soviet where for better or for worse everyone had homes, clothing food and medical care, has criminalized homelessness. It doesn’t seem to matter what side you’re on. The right comes to where you are. The U.S. is building a structure to encase a slumbering volcano in Yellowstone. Should it erupt there will be no more trappers on the eastern seaboard. I worked through the night.The anti trapping, anti sports hunting, end the extermination of wolves campaign booklet grows full with images. People who care won’t be able to look at any of it or read what I write. Years ago I read William Bolitho’s Murder For Profit profiling serial killers. Butchery and a stint in the armed forces, familiarity with violence and guns he decided were predictors of the serial murderer. He recognized the brutalizing family, fathers. I retain chilling impressions of a book I can hardly remember. I can’t bear to look at images of horses who’ve been made to move by psychopaths with metal pipes. Now we know it’s violence towards animals, the savage destruction of the helpless that predicts. Helplessness provokes a terrible inner child. Children of men whose images I collect will kill. Always pictures of the harm they’ve done. Grinning brutal, reckless, fearful, full of rage, addicted to hooch and adrenaline. At least the wolves who die have lived for however long a true and wild life. No wonder they are hunted. They are pristine. Here there are people who love wolves as they are. Here people don’t want to see two sides, have them killed selectively. How about Nabeki for President? Or WiZaRd. Can you confine yourself to Oaths? As for media I want The Movie. Peter. Let’s say for a plot, the orphaned child runs away from his brutal sports hunter of a grandfather to save his only real friend, the wolf.
For the Wild Ones
CMM

coriolis…I love your plot for a story: “the orphaned child runs away from his brutal sports hunter of a grandfather to save his only real friend, the wolf.” Wolves are predators and do what predators do but they have a complex social structure that the killers are trying to destroy.

I thought I posted this. I had two screens up. I may have closed without sending.
I can’t write stories. I can only write the truth as I’ve lived it, or journalize on research. So why don’t you give it to someone who knows what to do with it? Think of the potential educational value. First the feature full length then the animated remake. The boy has a difficult relationship with a First Nations boy from a rez. They’re just old enough to meet in an unsupervised context, say on their solitary rambles. Through awkwardness the friendship grows and strengthens. Still, the boy from the rez is torn by allegiances, perhaps his own bitter Grandfather and at first he’s a little envious of his friend’s unusual secret friend. Two socks reincarnate. (And they do come back. I swear) There’s a misunderstanding. First Nations grandfather resolves the conflict between the two not quite young men, honouring the white boy whose friend is wolf. And then corn liquor Grandpa and friends decide to hunt (the) wolf. But the boys win the day. It needs padding and dialogue. Probably First Nations Grand dad dies, say only indirectly as a result of the struggle. Heart. He comes to the boys in separate dreams with a promise for the future. The boys leave home to travel together, friends, and the wolf watches from a hill and howls. After the boys pass from sight the wolf is joined by a mate.
It’s all yours. And the sequel.
For the Wolves. Who’ll do the music?
CMM
Three Socks maybe over the top but the whole story line could have references that escape notice. Sporsthunting Grandpa’s family background, maybe degenerate on alcohol but Union, remembering that, proud. Said by a photo on the wall. Stories told to drinking partners partially overheard. A possible.The boy is upset at the sight of a hanging animal caught in a snare. Another. vegan Wolf pups, or digital. I found a jpg of the head and flank skin of a wolf hanging low to the ground from the branch of a tree where it had been tied. I’m using it for the cover page of Who Speaks For Wolf. The wolf might have white socks, only three, none. But the mate that turns up for close could have two. The boy journals, keeps it hidden. If he limps that’s too much, his ankle was injured but healed, a scar or he falls and injures his foot as he and his friend take to the road, painful, comic.
Let the world be safe for wolves.
Starting with Yellowstone.

Janet, The Obama administration is overturning years of hard work by the environmental community. The ranching and hunting communities couldn’t have asked for a stronger ally. He, his administration and those in the Democratic party we believed would protect wildlife have betrayed us.

Noah Greenwald, with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has frequently clashed with the government over species listings, called the new proposal a “recipe for extinction,” noting that it retains parts of the Bush-era policy that block protections for some species that have lost large parts of their historic range.
One such species is the plains bison, which has seen its population dwindle drastically since the country was settled but remains viable in a handful of areas, including Yellowstone National Park. The Fish and Wildlife Service has rejected proposals to require protections for those approximately 20,000 wild bison.
“We have no memory of the past, so all of a sudden a species is doing fine. It’s lost 99 percent of its range like the bison, but we just put on the blinders to all that,” Greenwald said.

Yes I will get on this over the weekend. I’m doing a post tonight on the wolf vigil in Nampa, Idaho on Monday, so I want to get the word out on that. But I’ll do this post on Sunday. It breaks my heart to think they are just going to swoop down on those poor wolves in the Lolo and start shooting them from the air. We have to get the word out!!!

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Wolf 253, the beloved Yellowstone Druid wolf named Limpy, who was shot and killed in March 08, on the very day ESA protections were lifted for the gray wolf, by the then Bush Administration.